Row to Succeed. in Show Business Without Really Opening

OWN on Bleecker Street these nights, a little bit of Off Broadway history is being made. A show; that has never officially opened (in Other words, the corps of critics has never been invited in to Write their reviews) has slyly become one of the biggest hits of the year.

It is the sex‐and‐skin musical revue Called “Let My People Come.”

Although the show began performances last Jan. 8 at the Village Gate, the well‐known cabaret in Greenwich Village, an “official opening” was deeided against because that would have meant that the critics were invited. 4nd that is the last thing the show's al‐year‐old lyricist‐composer, Earl Wilson Jr., wanted to have happen. Wilson, the son of the syndicated gossip columnist, is still burning because the critics clobbered his 1971 Broadway musical, 7, A. Day in the Life of Just About, Everyone,” making it extremely shortlived.

So “Slugger,’ as he used to be called in his father's column, decided to fight. He vowed that the only way the critics Would see this show was if they stood in line and paid for their tickets just like everyone else, something, it seems, that most critics are loathe to do. Njel Gussow of The Times is the only critic for a major newspaper to have reviewed the show so far. He didn't lace the music, the lyrics or the skits very much—and he thought the bodies looked better with clothes on.

“‐Still, the show continues to do sell‐out business, and has already grossed over l‐million — breaking all Village Gate records. Tickets are now being sold into 1975, a cast album has been released, and a London production has opened — to disastrous reviews. Companies are also planned for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Toronto, Paris, Sydney, Mexico City and Tokyo. Playboy published a color spread on the show and called it “a joyous celebration of sex,” and a Pinnacle Book on the story of the production is in the works. The 14‐member cast has recently joined Actors Equity, which njeans they are now earning an average of $250 a week rather than the $100 a week

Who goes to see this “sexual musical,” as it is billed? On the two nights (a Thursday and a Friday) that I: observed the audience, it seemed to Consist mainly of well‐dressed middleclass couples in their 30's and 40's, the kind of customers Broadway producers are crying for. (The $9.50 top on weekends and the $40 scalpers’ fee probably screens out a number of younger and/or less affluent theatergoers.)

The show also apparently has become a “must” for the Beautiful People, and black limousines are now a common sight in front of the Village Gate. The Baroness Guy de Rothschild saw the show soon after it opened, and told me in an interview the next day, “Oh, I just loved it. It's so funny. You ‘must see it!” Other notables who have seen it include Lee Radziwill, the Baron Alexis de Rede, Oscar and Francoise de la Renta, Marion Javits, Jacqueline Susann, Otto Preminger,'Patrice Munsel, Bob Dylan, Rudolf Nureyev, Jane Russell, Linda Lovelace, and a certain grande dame of New York society, who reportedly tapped her cane in time with one of the naughtier numbers and shouted “Right on!” when it over.

The show, which I found amusing on the first viewing and a bit tedious on the second, is really rather innocent, despite, its bawdy lyrics and simulated heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual acts. As Time magazine commented, “It is probably the least erotic musical since ‘Oklahoma!”, The impression of innocence comes from the tongue‐incheek nature of most of the songs and the skits, and from the young, vivacious cast, who look like Wholesome Kids Next Door.

My favorite, skit was one about the trials and tribulations of a young man who places personal ads in a sex magazine. most of the clunkers are in the second act, including a tasteless skit about hillbillies and a supposedly erotic number extolling oral sex ‘sung by an actress who can barely carry a tune. It is also a bit of a downer to see that Daina Darzin, the actress with the most beautiful body, had some surgical help along the way.

Why have people flocked to the show, making it an even bigger hit than its nudie predecessors, “Oh! Calcutta!” and “The Dirtiest Show in Town”? One night I, decided to ask members of the audience, at random, so I talked to a shopping center developer from Rye; a Voice of America employe who refused to give his name; a gay male couple; a German businessman; a fashion buyer from Port Huron, Mich.; a Max Factor executive; and an internist and his wife from Roslyn, L. who held hands throughout the show.

The fashion buyer summed up most of their thoughts when she told me, during intermission: “I came because it sounded like fun and a different kind of show, and it is—it's fantastic! A lot of people take sex too seriously and this puts it on a life level. It shows you that sex is fun and good, and not dirty.”

Arnie’ (he wouldn't give his last name), the spokesman. for 30 members of a B'nai B'rith’ singles club that attended the show en rnasse, said: “I asked our board of directors ‘if we could come and they said yes—With great smiles. It's an excellent show, tastefully done, and I wish I was in the cast.”

The only negative comments I heard came from four space scientists from Rockwell International in Los Angeles, one of whom said: “It's all kind of amateurish, if you ask me. The girls are like college sophomores who are trying to attract attention.”

Robert Gruber, a 41‐year‐old Manhattan securities analyst, said one of the reasons he liked the show was that the performers were “pretty average, wholesome‐looking people whose bodies were not intimidating to the audience.” Indeed, only two of the performers had exceptional Bodies Beautiful—the previously mentioned Ms. Darzin, and Dean Tait, a blond, muscular, former Mr. Southern States as well as Mr. Eastern States, who says he consumes 150 vitamin pills a day. “I say health is my wealth,” he told me.

And what do the city's drama critics think about a show that became a hit without their help—or hindrance, for that matter? Leonard Harris, critic for WCBS‐TV, said, “I think it's delightful. I think people pay more attention to critics than they should. I assume that people are going to see this show because of the nudity, and I'th no better judge of nudity than anyone else.”

John Simon, drama critic for New York Magazine, was as feisty as ever. “Who cares whether a piece of junk by Earl Wilson Jr. is reviewed or isn't reviewed?” he said. “I am a bit amused that such a big fuss is being made over a pathetic piece of pornography, when such as Joseph Papp can put on Macbeth at the Forum that is so swinishly bad, and keep it running for the full extended run, and nobody reviews it because he doesn't invite the critics. At Lincoln Center yeti That is revolting, and beneath contempt.”

The idea for “Let My People Come” was planted in August, 1973, when Earl Wilson Jr. received a telephone call from Phil Oesterman, who had produced a successful version of Wilson's “A Day in the Life of Just About Everyone” in Houston after it bombed in New York. Oesterman, an acknowledged homosexual, had also brought the nude play, “Geese,” to Off Broadway in 1968.

“I was an out‐of‐work singer when I got Phil's call,” Wilson told me the other day as he sat on the floor in his modest East 87th Street studio walk‐up apartment. At his side was his second wife, Mary Austin, a blonde former Baylor University beauty queen and American Airlines stewardess who resembles Tritia Nixon. They were married on June 1.

“Phil told me that the time was right to do a show about sex, and make it explicit and beautiful and funny and young,” Wilson said. “I said, ‘Didn't they do that in “Oh! Calcutta’ and he said, ‘No, there were no songs to speak of in “Calcutta.'” He said, ‘Sit down and write a song, and I want it outrageous.’ So I tried to think of the most outrageous thing could, and I came up with a song about oral sex. Actually, I'm a very conservative person…. I'm a real old‐fashioned sentimental kind of person. I believe in marriage, for example. I'm not someone who goes around using four letter words. I'm not obscene; I'm not perverted.”

“Earl's so conservative,” his wife chimed in.

Wilson, who wears a Christ‐like hairdo, moustache and beard, wrote and wrote and wrote, turning out 44 songs in five months, 20 of which wound. up in “Let My People Come.” Wilson and producer‐director Oesterman had no trouble getting a cast together—all took were several ‘ads in the show, business trade papers. Getting the cast to take off their clothes, and finding the $10,000 needed to open the show, were a bit more difficult. After Wilson staged several “encounter” sessions during rehearsals, the actors and actresses began to feel more at ease with each other and, one by one, they began shedding their clothes. Nudity is not requirement of the job, however, and of the 14 cast members, two men and two women still refuse to perform in the buff.

The money problem was finally solved when Wilson's mother, Rosemary, known to her husband's readers as the B.W. (beautiful wife), kicked in $3,000, which was added to the $7,000 that Oesterman had managed to raise through his two flower shops in Houston. Within weeks after the show opened, both investors were paid back.

“When you take in $10,000 in the first week, and now, $30,000 a week, why should you let critics determine what happens to your show?” Wilson said a bit bitterly. “I knew that a few critics could destroy us if they happened not to understand the show. The critics don't know anything about young people and what they have to say about their bodies, or their feelings or sex. Critics live on another planet. So we took a gamble.”

Wilson said he had no plans, despite three offers, to move “Let My People Come” to Broadway, where police might take a dimmer view of its nudity than they do in, the free‐wheeling Village. “It needs an Off Broadway atmosphere,” Wilson said. “It's much more relaxed at the Village Gate, and people enjoy sitting at tables, drinking, smoking and talking.”

Wilson, who has a music degree from Bucknell University, had a brief career as a pop singer before he began writing musical shows. For awhile, he called himself Eric Wade—and got nowhere. So he became Earl Wilson Jr. again.

Does he have any hang‐ups about being the son of a famous father? “I guess I did, and maybe I still do,” he said, “I always felt if I got something it was because I was his son, and if didn't get something, it was because was his son. I think this show vindicates me … in the eyes of myself anyway. I don't think you can say Earl Wilson Sr. made this show a hit.

“He was very nervous after he saw the first run‐through of the show. He said, ‘Do you think you can get away with it?, But at the opening night, he led the standing ovation, and then he came over and hugged me and said, think it's brilliant. I'm proud of you.'”

Mary: “And then you became your own man.”

Earl Junior (Smiling): “Right.”

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A version of this archives appears in print on September 15, 1974, on Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Row to Succeed. in Show Business Without Really Opening. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe